Outpost Antivirus Pro 7.0 doesn't detect or remove malware quite as well as the competition. It offers many features to protect clean systems against malware infestation, but it also spews confusing popups for good programs and malware alike. It's not a bad program, but you can do better.

Multi-layered Malware Blocking
Outpost offers many different technologies to keep malware from trashing a clean computer. Its Web Control blocks access to known malware-hosting sites and it scans files for malware any time they're accessed. Anti-leak protection warns when programs attempt inter-process communication, since some malware uses such techniques to manipulate other programs. Application guard prevents any modification of specific browsers, e-mail clients, and instant messaging clients. These protective features are enabled by default.

Those who wish can turn on additional layers of protection. The system guard module pops up a warning when any program tries to modify critical system areas such as the Run keys in the Registry, shell extensions, and Internet Explorer settings. Component control warns any time an unknown or changed program or program component launches. With these options turned on Outpost bombards you with a ton of popups; I left them in the default disabled state for testing.

To start, I attempted to download each of my current set of malware samples. Of course, some of the download URLs have gone dead, but most remain active. Outpost didn't block a single URL. It didn't even block URLs that Agnitum representatives assured me would serve to demonstrate Web Control. As it turns out, the final build of Outpost Antivirus Pro 7.0, released a couple weeks ago, was built incorrectly in such a way that Web Control just didn't work. Good thing I found that bug!

Even after Agnitum fixed the problem, Web Control blocked almost none of the malware sample URLsbarely over five percent. It did quarantine about 40 percent of the files immediately on download, however.

Continuing my testing, I opened a folder containing previously-downloaded instances of all the malware samples. Outpost wiped out over half of these on sight. Conveniently, it bundled multiple detections into just a few popup reports.

When I launched the items that weren't instantly obliterated Outpost reacted in almost every case with a popup stating "Application is attempting to modify another application's memory." However, the recommended default action was to allow the modification, and Outpost popped up the same message for almost every valid program installation, so I did not treat this as a malware detection event.

In a separate test of the product's ability to block installation of commercial keyloggers Outpost scored 5.4 points. That's better than Emsisoft (5.0 points) and Malwarebytes (2.4 points), but not even close to Spyware Doctor (8.9 points). Luckily for Agnitum, I give much less weight to the commercial keylogger test.

Looking specifically at threats using rootkit technology, whether from the malware collection or the keylogger collection, Outpost scored 7.2 points, the same as Emsisoft. That's decent, but Panda scored 8.3 points and Spyware Doctor got 9.3. As for blocking scareware (rogue security software), Outpost's 5.3 points is the lowest score so far. Even Returnil got 6.7 points in this test. For more information about my testing read "How We Test Anti-Malware."

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Neil Rubenking served as vice president and president of the San Francisco PC User Group for three years when the IBM PC was brand new. He was present at the formation of the Association of Shareware Professionals, and served on its board of directors. In 1986, PC Magazine brought Neil on board to handle the torrent of Turbo Pascal tips submitted by readers. By 1990, he had become PC Magazine's technical editor, and a coast-to-coast telecommuter. His "User to User" column supplied readers with tips...
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